I'm considering setting up a self-serve advertising program in place of Project Wonderful. The benefits of this will be that 1) we won't lose such a significant portion of revenue to Project Wonderful and 2) we'll be able to show relevant comic ads to people with ad-block (sorry people with ad-block).

It's not set in stone yet, HOWEVER, I'm going to do a test run for a little bit for free to see how performance is. I want to make sure it will be a good deal for the people spending money on ads as well as worthwhile for us. If you're interested in getting some free exposure, please send me a 300x250 and/or 728x90 ad for your comic, and I'll add it to the rotation for when the test starts. Ads subject to approval.

Can't speak for other ad-block users, but I only use ad block because most ads online are poorly targeted (if I'm on a webcomic site, I don't want to see ads for something I googled 3 days ago, I want to see ads for webcomics!), or are loud and animated. So, I'll happily look at these new ads!

Speaking of animated ads, will those be allowed? Will authors be able to control whether animated ads can appear on their sites, like one can on Project Wonderful? I dislike animated ads, so being able to block them at least on my own site is a feature I really appreciate. I must also admit that though I look forward to seeing relevant ads on SJ, if too many of them have distracting animations, I'll probably end up blocking them D:

To clarify, this system won't entirely replace the all the ads on Smack Jeeves. We still depend on revenue from traditional advertising sources, and those won't be going away.

Regarding animated ads - all the ads will go through an approval process. If the ads aren't of high quality (including being characteristically not-annoying i.e. overly animated), they won't be approved. Mild, slow-rate animation may be allowed. As always, any and all ads can be blocked with a subscription.

Will these ads also show up on SJ itself, where ads aren't blocked by subscriptions? That's where one goes to find new comics, after all - seems like the best place for ads of comics ;D

Will subscribers be able to selectively enable ads on their sites? For example, with template variables like how the Google ads were/are. If the ads under this system turn out to be high-quality on average, I wouldn't mind having them on my site even though I have a subscription.

eishiya wrote:Will these ads also show up on SJ itself, where ads aren't blocked by subscriptions? That's where one goes to find new comics, after all - seems like the best place for ads of comics ;D

Right now Project Wonderful ads are on SJ itself in rotation with our other ads. This would replace the PW ads as well as displaying to ad blockers.

eishiya wrote:Will subscribers be able to selectively enable ads on their sites? For example, with template variables like how the Google ads were/are. If the ads under this system turn out to be high-quality on average, I wouldn't mind having them on my site even though I have a subscription.

Potentially, sure. You may even think, hey, if I have a subscription and I am willing to show ads on my comic, maybe I should get a cut of the ad revenue. So let's address that. First of all, if you set up your own ads on your comic, you get 100% of the ad revenue. If you wanted SJ to provide the ads and give us a cut of the revenue... well that sounds a lot like an ad revenue sharing program, doesn't it. Well, I've looked into doing an ad revenue sharing program, but the numbers have been pretty sad for individual comics. Most comics with a Patreon are getting way more from patrons than they would from ads, and it doesn't look like it'd be worth it for anyone involved. So touching back on your original question, sure, we could have voluntary code to show strictly comic ads, but as of now we have no plans to do an ad revenue sharing program.

The self-serve ads are lovely <3 Thanks to everyone who has submitted one, you've made my SJ browsing experience more pleasant. I hope you all get some new readers out of it! (So far I haven't seen any ads for comics I haven't already checked out though xP)